Theres so much wrong with the current situation involving recreational vs commercial fishing regulations that I dont even now where to begin.
Lets start with North Carolina but keep in mind that this situation is the same in every state, with some being worse than others.
Ive read several articles in the past regarding how much money a typical fishermen spends on a normal fishing trip, with the majority of that going to the local economies. It varies tremendously depending on the situation but collectively its substantial.
Apparently NC recreational fishermen are restricted to a 1 month flounder season, with a limit of 1 per day. While commercial fishermen are limited to 100lbs per trip. Even more disturbing they can have even more flounder on their boat than the legal limits "if they were caught" in a neighboring states waters.
Ive been told that one can buy frozen flounder fillets at Walmart now for $5.00 per lb. Ive also seen flounder served at some all you can eat $29.99 buffets. So theyve taken the average Americans access away to our own resources and allotted them to the commercial fishing companies, most of which are probably foreign owned at that.
So our resources are sold off for a fraction of what they'd be worth locally both from direct sales & incidental benefits to local American towns and communities. Every commercial fishing operation takes money directly from the mouths of local gas stations, hotels, marinas, convenience stores, restaurants, and others who used to benefit from recreational fishing.
I might be kind of jumping around here, but just wanted to mention pound nets before I forget. These are like mazes made from nets. Theyre installed at the mouths of bays, and rivers in the primest of positions to intercept a large percentage of everything that swims in and out of these areas. You can even find online pound net maps for each state to see where these nets are currently located for yourselves. Up until this past year I don't think commercial flounder fishermen even had a trip limit, it was a free for all, first come first serve, with 70% of the entire state allotment given to the commercial fishermen (its still 70/30% as of the date of this post, 10-08-22). So although the recreational season is over, and the commercial mobile device season is over, commercial pound nets are still being used right now to haul in as much as 1000 lbs a day in just one management sector alone. And during the exact time that big egg laden, egg laying females are amassing and easily targeted in large numbers by commercial nets.....so much for "reducing limits to restore a sustainable population".
